Fresno St. ranks third in U.S. News for grad­u­a­tion rate per­for­mance

The U.S. News and World Re­port’s 2017 Best Col­lege rank­ings is­sued Tues­day again placed Fresno State among the top three best pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties in grad­u­a­tion rate per­for­mance na­tion­wide.

The U.S. News and World Re­port’s 2017 Best Col­lege rank­ings is­sued Tues­day again placed Fresno State among the top three best pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties in grad­u­a­tion rate per­for­mance na­tion­wide.

Fresno State scored third high­est among pub­lic na­tional uni­ver­si­ties and was No. 4 over­all this year. Last year, the Univer­sity ranked No. 1 among pub­lic na­tional uni­ver­si­ties and No. 3 among all na­tional uni­ver­si­ties.

The grad­u­a­tion rate per­for­mance cat­e­gory uses the Univer­sity’s ac­tual per­for­mance as com­pared to pre­dicted per­for­mance based on stu­dent de­mo­graph­ics, in­clud­ing spend­ing per stu­dent, ad­mis­sions se­lec­tiv­ity and the pro­por­tion of un­der­grad­u­ates re­ceiv­ing Pell grants.

Also, Fresno State was ranked No. 2 in the cat­e­gory “Least Per­cent of Grads with Debt” among pub­lic na­tional uni­ver­si­ties and No. 8 among all na­tional uni­ver­si­ties. Fifty-one per­cent of stu­dents grad­u­at­ing in 2018 will have an av­er­age debt of $18,221 com­pared to the na­tional av­er­age stu­dent debt of $30,000.

Fresno State achieved a strong show­ing de­spite re­port­ing a far lower ed­u­ca­tional ex­pen­di­ture per stu­dent than most uni­ver­si­ties. Yale, which ranked No. 3 over­all, spends the most, an av­er­age of $213,186 per stu­dent each year. The na­tional av­er­age is $37,373, while Fresno State spends $13,308 per stu­dent each year.

“This na­tional rank­ing is an­other in­di­ca­tion that Fresno State is pro­vid­ing a high-qual­ity, cost-ef­fec­tive ed­u­ca­tion,” said Univer­sity Pres­i­dent Joseph I. Cas­tro. “The ob­tain­ment of a univer­sity ed­u­ca­tion is one of the most pow­er­ful ways to pos­i­tively change the tra­jec­tory of a per­son, a fam­ily and a com­mu­nity.”

Fresno State’s re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion as a doc­toral univer­sity in 2016 means it has joined the top re­search uni­ver­si­ties in the na­tion in rank­ings pro­duced by the mag­a­zine.

Among the 23 cam­puses in the Cal­i­for­nia State Univer­sity sys­tem, Fresno State is one of four to com­pete at the na­tional level, in­clud­ing San Diego State Univer­sity, CSU Fullerton and San Francisco State.

“To again be ranked so highly among other na­tion­ally pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties is a great tes­ta­ment to our fac­ulty, staff and es­pe­cially our stu­dents whose bold aca­demic suc­cesses year-in and year-out demon­strate the high qual­ity of ed­u­ca­tion Fresno State de­liv­ers,” said Provost Lyn­nette Zelezny.

U.S. News and World Re­port eval­u­ates cam­puses on mul­ti­ple fac­tors for its over­all na­tional rank­ing. The mag­a­zine gives the most weight to grad­u­a­tion and re­ten­tion rates and un­der­grad­u­ate aca­demic rep­u­ta­tion, fol­lowed by fac­ulty re­sources, stu­dent se­lec­tiv­ity, fi­nan­cial re­sources, grad­u­a­tion rate per­for­mance and alumni giv­ing.